The road to happiness is indirect and full of frustration.

From succubi to aliens, stories of abductions or other unsettling encounters have been with us for millennia. What explains them?

Admit it: you have no idea why a group of crows is called a murder. Here’s why.

Once numbering just 27 birds, the global population of California condors is now in the hundreds.

Beautiful people really know how to catch a break.

There are an estimated two trillion galaxies within the observable Universe. Most are already unreachable, and the situation only gets worse.

The language you speak plays an important role in how you evaluate truth.

OCD and addiction may result in part from improper “reward” pathways in the brain. Ultrasound can disrupt those pathways.

Your brain is remarkably good at mapping out physical spaces — even if it’s an imaginary space like Hogwarts. But how does the brain do it?

The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It’s theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn’t agree.

Scientists ranked countries on their end-of-life care. The U.S. fared poorly.

Most things in the world can be seen in surprisingly different ways.

Hubble’s deepest views of space revealed fewer than 10% of the Universe’s galaxies. James Webb will change that forever.

The first personality tests revolved around assessing people’s reactions to ambiguous and often unsettling images. Today, the gold standard is a barrage of questions.

Stockholm Syndrome is the most famous of 10 psychological disorders named after world cities. Most relate to tourism or hostage-taking.

This flying car — more properly called an “electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle” — will seat five and fly up to 135 mph.

People around the world, mostly Generation Z, are obsessed with the look and feel of gothic, elitist universities. Why?

It has been 50 years since an American has claimed the title of World Chess Champion. Will it ever happen again?

Impressive but deadly physics underlie catastrophic eruptions.

A boy in Germany seems to be the first person to be cured of a rare and painful skin condition commonly called “butterfly disease.”

In terms of the planets we’ve discovered, super-Earths are by far the most common. What does that mean for the Universe?

Some U.S. intelligence operatives have suggested foreign adversaries may be using “directed-energy” weapons against Americans.

We are generally taught that there is an arc of history — an inevitable path of progress that leads to modern society. Maybe it isn’t true.

The book “The Genesis Machine” outlines the promise and peril of synthetic biology, a powerful tool that will allow us to program life like a computer.

Pizzanomics isn’t an official field of research, but it can save you big money.

On the largest scales, galaxies don’t simply clump together, but form superclusters. Too bad they don’t remain bound together.

It is time to give the Russian cosmologist the credit he deserves.

It is often assumed that AI will become so advanced that the technology will be able to do anything. In reality, there are limits.

People who visit Florence seem strangely susceptible to Stendhal syndrome, which is blamed on an overwhelming sense of awe.

If you want to understand what the Universe is, how it began, evolved, and will eventually end, astrophysics is the only way to go.